Dog Training Works Best When Owners Learn Too

Your dog can sit perfectly in the living room, then act like you’ve never met the second a squirrel darts by. That gap between “knows it” and “does it anywhere” is what we dig into with Julie Madison of Top Tier K9 Bradenton, a trainer with over 20 years of experience spanning rescue work, rehab, and service dog placement.

We talk about what makes a board and train program actually work long-term, and why the owner’s skills matter just as much as the dog’s obedience. Julie walks us through her four-week training structure, starting with relationship building in low distraction and progressing toward reliable off-leash fundamentals. If you’ve ever wondered why a month of training can fall apart at home, her explanation is refreshingly direct: training has to transfer to the handler, not just the dog.

Julie also clears up common dog training myths by explaining her approach, “adaptive reliability.” She teaches with positive reinforcement first, then uses the minimum safe, fair correction needed when real-world distractions beat out treats and praise. The goal isn’t a shut-down dog, but a confident dog with clear boundaries and clearer communication.

We also get into how she serves Bradenton and the surrounding area, why veterinarians refer clients to her, and how Top Tier K9 is using tools like training videos, virtual reality practice, and an AI support system to help owners troubleshoot in real time. If you’re searching for dog training in Bradenton FL, puppy training, behavior help, or off-leash obedience that holds up in public, this conversation gives you a practical framework to think about results.

Subscribe for more conversations with local experts, share this with a fellow dog owner, and leave a review with your biggest training challenge so we can tackle it next.

Transcript

Welcome To Good Neighbor Podcast

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Virginia McConnell.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast Live. Are you in need of a dog trainer? One might be closer than you

Julie Madison’s Path Into Dog Training

SPEAKER_02 0:19

think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Julie Madison, with top tier canine Bradenton. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on the show today.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Yeah, yeah. We're excited to hear about you and your business. Can you tell me about your business a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yes. So I've been working with dogs for over 20 years. I started out in rescue, rehab, and rehabilitation. Uh I spent uh pretty much in high school. That's all I did. I didn't have a social life. I didn't do anything else on weekend. I didn't have a job. I just went to our local shelter. And uh pretty much from eight or nine o'clock in the morning till five or six o'clock at night, I just worked dogs. I let them out. I did laundry. Um, I worked on placing them in homes with the appropriate families. Uh that's that's pretty much all I did. And then from there, I went and trained my own uh animal, my own dog for animal-assisted therapy. So I went to senior living facilities and I brought her in and kind of socialized that way. And then about five years ago, I adopted a puppy that was beyond my skill set. And I was confused because I'm like, I have all this experience. I know how to train dogs. What am I missing here? And so I went to uh top tier canine as a client to try to figure out where I was going wrong and what was missing. And I learned more about training dogs and building actual relationships with dogs in the four or eight-week program there than I had my entire career of working in municipal shelters, nonprofits, animals. Like it was just uh a very eye-opening experience about how to build healthy relationships with dogs.

What Top Tier K9 Offers

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Um, and then I started my business about three years ago. I'm certified in basic pet trainer, um uh foundation dogs with just taking puppies from eight weeks old and training them in scent detection, tracking, advanced obedience, and protection, and then finishing them for whatever task they need to be. So service dogs, medical alert dogs, uh, drug detection protection. I I have all of those skills. Um, I've placed probably six or seven service dogs so far in my last three years. Um, most of my business is basic pets. So primarily what I do is I start off with a board and train program where I bring dogs into my home for four weeks and then I bring my owners in once a week so that they can learn how to progress and

The Four Week Board And Train

SPEAKER_01 2:55

maintain the work that I'm doing. And each week we go over a new skill set. So week one is just relationship building and teaching my owners and my dogs how to train and how to pay attention to each other in a very low distraction environment. And then the next week, I teach safe and fair corrections so that they start to learn commands and really how to communicate when they're doing things correctly and when they're doing things incorrectly, again in low distraction so that they can really build and pay attention to each other. And then week three, I start to introduce safe and fair corrections in higher distraction environments and working through distance distraction duration. And then week four, where we're we're working on the fundamentals of reliable off-leash obedience.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Okay, wow. Yeah. It's like it's so funny because I have dogs, and if if you are not trained and you you don't know what you're doing, like you can have your dog trained all day and bring them somewhere, drop them off, come pick them up a month later, and it's pointless if you don't know what you're doing with them, and you know, build that relationship on top of it. So I love that approach. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, so and what it does is it so it allows me to bring the dog up really quickly because I have so much experience. So my dogs improve by about 80% while they're in program. And it's always easier for my dog owners to work dogs that actually know how to train than it is for them to try to bring a dog up that doesn't know anything because they don't know how to bring dogs up, right? So it what it really does is it maximizes the time. And this is really important for people who are having those major issues because they don't have the time for six months, a year, whatever. Like they need results very, very quickly, um, especially if there's a threat of injury or threat of a bite risk or whatever. Um, so what I can do is I use my experience to bring the dog up quickly, and then the owners come in and all they have to do is learn how to maintain it. And then I also offer free follow-ups on Saturdays so that my owners get ongoing maintenance and support. And I always recommend that my owners do um anywhere between three to six months after they graduate the program so that they can continue to work on improving themselves as handlers.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

All right. Okay. So, what are some myths or misconceptions in in your interview?

Training Myths And Adaptive Reliability

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Um, so so pretty much I think the biggest misconception about what I do specifically is I train uh using something called adaptive reliability. There's three basic uh schools of dog training. You have your purely positive, which is you only reward and that's all you do. Um, and then you have balanced kind of training. Um, but what they've been finding is that most balanced trainers are actually compulsion trainers. So with purely positive, it's all about making the dog happy, which I'm very supportive of. I I really incorporate a lot of positivity into my training. Um, but then with a lot of balanced trainers, what they do is they'll use the tools to force train the dog. And what happens in that type of training is it winds up submitting the dog, and the dog tends to shut down and not be very happy during training. And what I do is called adaptive reliability. So I use purely positive to teach, and then I use the bare minimum corrections necessary just to get the dog to understand that it does have to do what I'm asking it to do. Um, and what happens in that mode and that model is instead of shutting the dog down, the dog actually builds a lot of confidence because the communication is so clear. And that's how it actually fixes a lot of the issues really quickly. Is the issue with purely positive is sometimes there are going to be times where you will not be more stimulating than whatever else is out there, right? You know, you can be fun up until the point where that squirrel is more interesting, um, or that lizard, or you know, whatever, whatever it is that triggers that dog, you can be fun up until a certain point, but with most dogs, and I'm not gonna say all dogs because there are some very, very compliant dogs where you may never need to issue a correction and every dog is different. Um, but a lot of dogs, there's a boundary where you become not as interesting. And that's what the safe and fair corrections are for, is once they hit that boundary, you can correct them back to the behavior that they need to be doing safely.

Who Julie Helps And How She Markets

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Okay, so we know marketing is the heart of every business. Who's your target customers and how do you attract them?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Um, so my target customers are anyone who wants to have a better relationship with their dog and they're struggling. Um, I work with a lot of families with young children, um, especially if you're bringing a new dog into the home, I highly recommend my services uh because I teach you how to incorporate that dog safely into the family. Um, I try to get in touch with a lot of uh clients that are adopting dogs before they actually adopt dogs. Um, because if I can get the dog to come into my program, teach it what it needs to know, and then it goes into the home, it has a much higher success rate than if people just bring that dog into the home. Um, I work, uh I actually have a lot of veterinarians that I work with uh that recommend me um because they'll see dogs that are coming in with owners that are mentioning issues. So I get a lot of really nice vet uh veterinarian referrals. Uh I go out to a lot of farmers markets and I just work my dog. Uh I really do feel that um there's something that watching me work a dog is way more valuable than me trying to tell you about what I can do for you and your dog. Uh so I really get a lot of a lot of positive feedback when I go out just to farmers markets. If you hang out at the Bradenton farmers market, you've probably seen me around. I go over to Lakewood Ranch a bunch, uh, sometime down to the Sarasota one, just depending on what type of mood I'm in and what type of experience I I'm looking for with that dog. Um but yeah, the those are my main ways of uh promoting myself and getting out into the community.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Okay.

Life Inside A Home Based Program

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Have you ever thought about doing your own podcast?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Um, I have. I just really I don't know much about it, and I've really just spent a lot of time focused on the dogs. So I don't even know where I would go with with the podcast. Um yeah. That's pretty much my voicemail is like if I'm not able to pick up my phone, I'm out training. And you know, most it's really nice because I work, I run my board and train out of my home. So pretty much I get to wake up in the morning and go straight into what I love. I don't have to worry about traffic. I don't have to worry about am I running late for work? Like as soon as someone starts calling me in the house uh and I hear a dog bark, I'm like, oh, it's time for work. Like um normally it doesn't even get to that point. Uh so normally I start my days uh between like six, five and six o'clock in the morning, and I just get up and I let everyone out and they go potty, and then uh we do round two of training between you know nine and eleven, and then I tuck everyone in for the afternoon heat because Florida sucks and you can't do anything between 11 and 3. Um, and then I pull everyone out around 3:30, 4 o'clock, and I do two more rounds and have dinner and watch a movie and go to bed. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

That's a perfect day.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

It's so nice. It's like groundhog day, but so much better than that.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Uh

App Videos VR And AI Training Support

SPEAKER_02 11:18

okay, Julie, can you please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about top tier canine Braid and Tint?

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Um that we have the best handler-owner training experience on the market. So, with all the clients that come through the board and train program, not only do they get my experience and a really well-structured program and hands-on training time and all that sort of stuff, but we actually have an app where I can send you a training video. So, pretty much week one, I send out a video. So while your dog's learning, you're actually at home watching a video, learning the basic fundamentals. So, week one, you're coming in with that knowledge of what you have to do. So you're already starting out ahead. Uh, then I actually have a dog on campus who's my demo dog, and I'll train most of my clients with her first because week one, they're working uh the dogs and the owners are working, are still in different places week one. Right. So the dogs haven't worked through any distraction, and a lot of times the owners are almost the highest level distraction that that dog could possibly have, right? Because they're like, oh my god, like the owners are super excited, the dogs are super excited. So normally, my week one lesson, what I'll do is I'll bring out my demo dog first because she knows program, and she will get on her climb and she will pretty much train my owners, and then I'll bring their dog out so then they can kind of practice with their dog and get a feel for what those differences are as well. Um, and then so and then like week two, week three, they're getting a lot more from that user experience because now they've had the videos, they've trained on a dog that knows program, they've had that hands-on experience. Uh, we actually are the only training company in the world that has a virtual reality dog training. So if you have like an Oculus headset, you can train, learn how to train program by yourself in your living room without a dog. Um we are the only dog training in the cup uh company in the world that has an AI program as well. So if I have an owner at night who's like 10 o'clock at night, three o'clock on a Saturday, whatever, I'm not available, they can just go and ask our AI program. And our AI program is based off of our specific training model. So it will get training answers based on our program to help troubleshoot whatever issues that they're going through in real time. They don't have to wait for me. Um yeah, and actually, we are about to launch a robotic, um, a robotic tool where people will actually be able to learn how to give safe and fair corrections to the robotic tool to measure the pressure first. So instead of having to learn how to give corrections on a live dog, they'll be able to learn how to give corrections on that um on the on the technology. So they'll give the correction and then the technology will measure if the correction was too harsh and if they did it correctly or not. Oh wow. So we're we're our our company is doing so much to make sure that our dogs and our owners are moving through program as quickly, as safely, and efficiently as possible to really maximize our programming for sure. Yeah.

How To Find Top Tier K9

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

How can our listeners learn more about top tier canine Bradenton?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Um, I am on Facebook, uh Top Tier K9 Bradenton. Uh I'm also on Instagram and on TikTok. And then our website is also very informative about all of the programming that we offer. It's www.toptierk9.com slash Bradenton dash Florida.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Perfect. Awesome. Well, Julie, I really appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your business the best moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Thank you so much for having me, Virginia. I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity to talk to the community.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show. Go to gnpsarasota.com. That's gnpsarasota.com or call 941 949 1865.